


Time After Time

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, Post-Series, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5741125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the war, Luke offers his nephew a new career.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time After Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



One seedy spaceport was much like any other. In his first, Luke had annoyed a pair of grouchy aliens just by existing, and then he'd met his best friend. In the many seedy spaceports he had seen since, he'd grown accustomed to the smells of old drink and older grudges. Peddlers sold junky trinkets, pilots sold unregistered shipments, hungry youths sold their own flesh, and all of the shadowed bustle took place as someone behind a counter sold whatever intoxicant helped the patrons avoid their own demons for another hour.

This was no different from anywhere else he'd paused.

"Don't I know you, handsome?" asked a boy with alcohol crystalizing on his breath and a price guide displayed on his inner wrist.

"No." Luke settled deeper into his cowl. No one here knew him. He'd chosen this bar for that precise reason. No Resistance or Third Republic. No First Order stragglers. No one to look for a fight or demand answers for long forgotten questions. The legend of Luke Skywalker could stay a legend, and he could find some peace, his own intoxicant of choice.

"Are you sure?" The boy settled a hand on his arm. But he was young, so young.

"You don't know me. You don't know anyone here. You're tired of this and you're going to hop the next freighter to one of the inner worlds, pick up a trade, and go to school."

The bemused expression on the boy's face was worth it as he mumbled Luke's words and exited the bar without a playmate for the night.

"It's rude to place thoughts in someone else's mind," said a voice. "Jedi powers shouldn't be used to control people. That's Dark Side magic." The voice was mocking, and the face frowned as the figure slipped into the seat opposite.

Luke had felt the presence for some time. "I didn't think you'd come."

"Neither did I." The man scowled. Luke couldn't think of him as anything other than Ben. He'd aged, another ten years on his brow since they'd last faced each other. They'd both been armed that day. Luke was armed now. He was certain his nephew was as well.

Ben wore a traveler's cloak over his clothes. He looked so much like his father Luke's heart couldn't take it. He looked away, down at his untouched drink.

"I have a ship," Luke said. "Not the fastest I've ever seen, but she handles all right. I need a co-pilot."

Ben crossed his arms. "I don't dare show my face in the respectable areas of the galaxy. Your protégé has seen to that." 

"I'm not offering a return to the respectable areas. I'm looking to pick up some trade in the outer rim. Transportation, quiet cargo runs. You know the job." He should. Ben spent half his childhood on the _Falcon_ , and Han never had been good at staying out of his old business even when he should have been keeping to the straight and narrow.

"Why?"

"You know why."

He wouldn't come out and say what Ben already knew, that he was all that remained in the whole galaxy of the two people Luke had cared about most. Even now Luke's eyes darted up from his cup to see that face. He could feel the attempt at a mind touch, which he wouldn't allow now.

"What's the pay? Without my former employers, I find myself without credits. I wouldn't take on a job that paid poorly."

"You can have half of whatever we take. When it's all done for me, you can have the ship, too."

An hour later, they met in the landing bay. Ben's face spoke volumes. "I wouldn't take this ship off your hands if you paid me."

"You're saying you don't think you can fly her?" Luke moved past him to the lowered gangplank. "I guess I could ask a better pilot."

"You think you're being clever. You're not." Ben followed him aboard. "What's her name?"

Luke slid into the cockpit. "The _Naboo Queen_."

"You. Are. Ridiculous." Ben didn't sit. "Could you be more obvious?"

"About what? One of the many elected queens once had a secret marriage and a secret pregnancy and she died over sixty years ago. I've never heard of her, and neither has anyone else." He flipped the initiation sequence on the switches.

"Ridiculous." He sat. Shooting annoyed looks at Luke, he began the launch sequence as though he'd flown this model a thousand times before. But he'd always been a natural. They all were.

Living with Ben after so much time was much like living with a feral felinx. They'd spend long periods barely in the same room, and Ben was all prickles and bitterness. Then they'd scrape through another close call with a disgruntled client and he'd smile as easily as he had thirty years ago. Luke might go to compliment him, though, and he'd be back with the claws out and his back up.

Patience. Luke wasn't great at patience, but he was better than some. All he had left in his life was time. He could spend it on family.

"When do we arrive?" he asked Ben during a routine trip between Alluuvia and Kallis. He risked a hand on the chair, not yet one on his shoulder.

"I've set a course to save us fuel. It'll be just under six hours."

Luke checked his calculations, noting the quick, short boosts they were gaining from solar wells along their path. Luke himself had never had the knack for knowing which would snag a ship with their gravity and which could be skipped off like stones on a pond. Han had been brilliant at the trick.

"I'm not him."

He'd been thinking too loud again. "I know."

"I'm not her, either."

"I didn't think you were."

"You keep hoping. You walk in here each day and you hope you'll have your two best friends back. Stop. Not only will you drive yourself mad, your disappointment is annoying."

"I'm sorry." Luke sat in the other seat. "I do see you as yourself. I swear. And I also see them. I can't separate."

"You should. You should have a long time ago." There was that blame Luke'd been expecting. If only he'd seen the darkness gnawing inside his nephew inside of papering over his own apprehensions with the surety Han and Leia could never go dark. If only he'd been capable of distinguishing his feelings about them from the danger growing under his own negligent eyes.

"I see you now."

He was almost expecting the kiss, but only almost. He'd more expected a punch, which he could have blocked or taken, whichever would have given Ben better closure. Instead there was a hot mouth pressed against his. It had been years since the last time Luke was kissed, and rarely had it been with this intensity. He responded with instinct, hands reaching to hold arms, only to feel the sharp blow of Ben's hands on his, squeezing them in place.

Luke broke the kiss, panting a little. "Ben."

"Don't call me that name." His mouth crushed Luke's with another kiss. Luke kissed him back, biting into his teeth.

"I won't call you the other name. You're going to have to pick a new one."

"Fine. I'll let you know." Ben tugged him from the chair. They hit the floor hard. Luke had been playing along, aching for the feel of anyone else's skin against his. Even a kiss he could justify. He had exchanged a few of those with Leia before they'd found out the truth. He could feel Ben press against him now, and remembered he'd had a similar reaction back them himself.

There really wasn't anything normal about their family.

One of them had to be the sane one. Luke hated when that person was him. He pushed Ben away. "Ben, or whatever you end up calling yourself, we should stop."

"Why?" He moved his hips against Luke's. It had the exact reaction he was looking for, unfortunately.

"The same reason I turned you down when you were fifteen."

"I'm forty years old. I'm not a child. I'm capable of making my own decisions." His mind opened to Luke's, finally. Luke hadn't pushed, and had seen the barriers from far away. Now he was welcomed inside. He saw the well of self-loathing, large as a star, squatting inside Ben's brain. He also saw the loneliness, and yes, quite a lot of boredom.

Luke thought, _You want this because you're bored?_

The returned thought was, _Is there a better reason?_

_We're family._

_We're connected._

Luke's own resistance had never been strong, not when presented with simple need and pain he could help heal. He leaned up for a gentler kiss. _Join with me._

They had not properly joined each other's thoughts for decades. He felt the hesitancy, then the sensation of another mind, familiar and loved, settling inside his own. They kissed again, physical forms making their own decisions without the guidance of minds too intensely entwined. Luke felt his flies undone, felt Ben's hand on him, and took the warmth of Ben's length into his own hand. The feel and the motion were known from every long night spent alone. The weight of another body pressed against him was new, and the hiss in his ear as he twisted his wrist.

It had been a long time for both of them. This couldn't last long.

Luke dove deeper into Ben's mind, swimming past the old resentments and the newer scars. He'd walked away from the Dark Side but fingers of the past still jabbed into the sensitive places of his soul. Luke kissed his lips and his spirit kissed each wound. _I forgive you. I forgive you. Always._

He tasted salt and knew Ben was crying. _I forgive you, too,_ he thought back at Luke. There was something undignified about a man shooting his seed into your hand, some closeness lost. Luke had loved taking his lovers into him, or pulsing into the body he'd joined. Undignified or not, the feel of Ben's climax hit his mind, ricocheting with pure light and driving Luke over his own edge, coming hotly between them into Ben's sure grip.

Guilt instantly ate at him. He'd avoided this, avoiding anything inappropriate with Ben, had barely avoided going to a place he couldn't come back from with Leia.

Ben kissed him again. "Don't. You have no power over me. We have no children to concern ourselves with. No one in the galaxy cares except those ghosts who were watching just now."

Luke sat up so hard he banged his head on the chair. There were no ghosts in the cockpit with them. He saw Ben's amused grin. If he'd seen that grin a hundred times before on a different face, he wasn't about to say so now.

"We're a mess," Luke said, instead of swearing at him.

"In too many ways." Ben looked up at the console. "We have five and a half hours to clean up. Or to get messier." He touched Luke's face with his clean hand. Luke let himself enjoy the touch and the opening glimmer of affection he felt. Just a glimmer. He had the rest of his life to prise open the rest, and he had five and a half hours to get started now.

"I could get used to messier."

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel: [If You Fall I Will Catch You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5997907)


End file.
